Generally, signal connectors refer to all connection elements and auxiliary accessories thereof used for the electrical signal and power applications. Signal connectors bridge all signals and their quality affects the electricity and signal transmission reliability. Furthermore, signal connectors are closely related to the operation of electronic systems. Following the ever advancing development of electronic technology, the signal connector has become an indispensable equipment for all kinds of electronic devices to transmit data and connect to other peripheral devices. Among the transmission specifications of many connectors, universal serial bus (USB) is the most popular one.
Currently, the USB specification will soon fully enter USB 3.1. In order to enhance the transmission speed, transmission signal type, convenience for plug and unplug, the industry further introduces “Type-C connector”. The structure of Type-C connector has a significant change that is an “up-down symmetrical structure”. Users no longer need to identify the up side and bottom side of the plug specifically and, instead, can simply insert the plug to the corresponding socket, allowing the behavior that users do by instinct. However, in order to allow the plug to be inserted without the need of flipping the up side or bottom side around, Type-C connector must be provided with two identical sets of connection terminals. In addition, in order to prevent interference between signals of two sets of terminals, a ground piece must be provided within the connector thus to separate these two sets of terminals.
As the current industrial trend focuses on the mainstream design of electronic devices that are light weighted, slim and small in size, such specification for Type-C connectors of USB 3.1 poses difficulty and new challenges for the production and assembly process. Especially, when the structure becomes smaller, the distance between terminals undoubtedly is shortened, resulting in the degradation of the shielding effect of the aforementioned ground piece. Therefore, how to further improve the connector structure is the important topic that the present invention intends to solve.